A look into the job of a Reactive Shift officer working in a mix of sleepy villages and nightmare towns.
All names / locations have been changed and the views expressed are my own and not of the Police Service. Enjoy! (All views may not exactly reflect official policy)

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Staffing

I have now been acting skipper on a reactive shift for about a month ish prior to that i was acting neighbourhood skipper.

There are a hell of alot of differences in the responsibilities. I mean struggling to resource jobs with minimum staffing. Trying to bottom out the sometimes poor handovers from the previous shifts (who to be fair dont have a skipper most of the time). And trying to get the team to perform.

Its quite a balance especially where i dont have the numbers on shift to be able to resource Urgent jobs as well as allowing them time to progress their own jobs. At the same time trying to get the detection rate up and getting their workloads down.

I have had to be quite ruthless with their jobs and file them at the first chance i get to save endless enquiries which will lead nowhere in an effort to bring down the number of jobs they are carrying.

In theory if i reduce their current workload then they will be able to be more proactive and get the drugs searches and public order jobs rather that constantly taking statements to progress their own jobs. Also the less work they carry in theory the happier they will be at work. I mean when i used to carry a heavy workload i used to dread coming in to have to do more paperwork, and when the level dropped then i was happier in my role and was getting the proactive stops, the drugs searches, disrupting the drunks causing problems.

Its just so hard to do these days balancing the needs of victims, and the needs of the community as well as the welfare of my officers. Along with resourcing the new jobs coming in which need attendance.

I dont like to keep callers waiting for attendance, but need to prioritise their call because our grading system isnt the best and we really need several kinds of urgent rather than one.

I am going onto nights this week so will be trying to get my officers out there rather than sitting in the nick doing paperwork. I will be out there too trying in an effort to lead by example.

They are not a bad team, they can work hard when pushed, i just want them to work hard, enjoy the job without being pushed.

Having said that, we had 3 officers on duty recently and still managed to arrest 2 for burglary which resulted in them being late off. Sadly they wouldnt allow me overtime to supervise the final stages and i really hope they did a good job after the arrests otherwise it will marr the good efforts at the scene. I guess i little faith and hope they dont let me and themselves down!

6 comments:

I was hoping to spread the word about the incredibly inspirational story of Mike Kralicek. He was shot LOD, became a paraplegic, and is now a motivational speaker. I was hoping to share his story with as many brothers in blue as possible. Here's the video:

My friend tells me that police officers at Hornsey Police station in Haringey use organised stalking and harassment tactics to 'sort out' individuals. I thought he meant drug dealers and burglars but he clarified that most people dealt this way seem to be law abiding, ethnic minorities more and often black males.

As a juvenile, my friend who works locally at a garage, used to get into a lot of scrapes with the law. Now that he is on the straight and narrow, he has been asked to help out in surveilling and what he calls cocooning these individuals. He says that he thinks most are not criminals but appear to have annoyed someone for whatever reason. He also gets paid for his 'jobs'.

Is there substance to this or is old matey pulling my leg?

I have posted this query at other police blogs. Any info would be appreciated.